News: Taking the Time – Art Installation @ Wellington Square, Stockton

On Thursday 27 May ARC will be bringing a brand-new art installation to Stockton’s Wellington Square for 48 hours. Taking The Time is a new exhibit created with 1,440 Stockton residents and asks what specific clock time is important to them and why it is important?

The artists behind the piece are Gillian Lees and Adam Gregory who collected the answers to these questions in 2019 with the exhibition originally set to take place in 2020, however with the COVID-19 pandemic this was delayed a year.

Adam Gregory, adds…
“We were supposed to install Taking the Time over a year ago – actually 587,520 minutes if you’re counting! Gillian and I see Taking the Time as a celebration of how time moves us and how we spend our time, but it’s also a celebration of the people involved and the times that mean something to them.”

“We were made so welcome by the people in Stockton and by ARC (who commissioned us to make it) and we can’t wait to get started.”

The project will see the two artists working without rest for a full 24 hours from 12pm on Wednesday 26th May where they will set the alarms on, and place 1,440 digital watches in an empty retail unit in Wellington Square, Stockton, one at a time. The alarm on each watch will be set to a time donated by somebody with a connection to Stockton with each representing a time of special significance to the person who donated it. A record of the times donated, and the reasons people chose them as significant will also be on display.

From 12pm on Thursday 27th May until midday on Friday 28 May the watches will be  displayed in the space. Each alarm will go off at its set time creating a monument that moves between silence and chorus to the rhythms of the town and its residents.